Cartocci Siciliani with Cream Pastry
Cartocci Siciliani with Cream Pastry
Dessert originally from Italy, an brioche Italian based dough and deep fried and stuffed with cream pastry, in Italy usually is filled with ricotta cream, but this recipe I prefer with cream pastry
INGREDIENTS
- 500 gr 00 flour, if unavailable use All-Purpose Flour
- 1 large egg
- 60 gr unsalted butter
- 60 gr granulated sugar
- 1 lemon, zest only
- 1 bag of dry yeast
- 250ml lukewarm milk, as much as needed
- vegetable oil for deep frying
Pastry cream filling
- 400 ml milk
- 1 vanilla pod (bean), split lengthwise
- 4 egg yolks
- 100 g sugar
- 30 g flour
- 30 g cornflour (cornstarch)
INSTRUCTIONS
- In a large bowl put the sifted flour together with the sugar, add the whole egg and lightly beat with a fork. Melt the yeast in 125 ml of warm milk and add this to the dough as well. Melt the lard in a bain-marie or in the microwave and also dissolve the salt in the remaining 125 ml milk. Add the salt with the milk and finally the melted lard. When the dough is more compact, start kneading with your hands. Transfer the dough on a pastry board and continue to knead until the dough is smooth and firm. It will take about 15 minutes. If you have a planetary mixer, start incorporating the ingredients with the leaf and then replace it with the kneading hook.
- Place the dough in a bowl and cover it with plastic wrap, let rise about 2 hours.
- While waiting to rise make your Pastry cream filling
- Now take a tray that will contain the fried parcels, cover it with a sheet of parchment paper and brush the parchment paper with oil. Take the traditional cannoli torch. If you do not have the traditional empty tin torches inside, you can make torches by rolling a sheet of aluminum paper about 12 cm wide to reach a diameter of 2 cm. Take the cord and roll it over the torch overlapping the ends so as to fix the dough trying to make at least three turns.
- When you twist the string around the torch you absolutely must not pull the dough, but turn it around the torch gently and be careful to leave half a cm of space on one side and the other; during the leavening phase the parcel will also cover that space. Place the rolls on the tray lined with parchment paper and brush with oil. After this time the cartridges will have increased their volume. Put the oil in a 22 cm high pot and heat it, it is important that the oil temperature does not exceed 170 °. Fry the parcels, soaking them in the pot with pliers and turning them often, remove them when they are brown, but not burned. Each cartoccio will have 6/7 minutes of cooking time.
- the coat them with granulated sugar
- then start filling with Pastry cream filling
Here are the more simpler instructions
- In a stand mixer, mix the flour, butter, sugar and lemon zest. Let everything mix well. You want the butter to be fully absorbed by the flour.
- Add the yeast and mix then add the egg and mix.
- Add enough milk to give you a dough that can be rolled. Not too soft, but not too hard either.
- Cover the dough and let it rise for 1 1/2 hours in a warm part of the house.
- Take a ball of dough and roll it flat with a rolling pin. Cut the dough into strips of about 1″ wide, 1/4″ thick and about 8″ long.
- Wrap each strip in a spiral around a Cannoli tube. Make all your
- Cartocci, cover them and leave them to rise for another hour.
- Deep fry all the Cartocci until they are golden brown.
- Let them cool off and fill them with Ricotta Cream, Custard Cream or a Nutella Mousse
Make your PASTRY FILLING
- Put milk and vanilla in a heavy-based saucepan and bring to the boil. Set aside. Combine egg yolks and sugar and beat until pale yellow and thick. Whisk in flour and cornflour. Remove the vanilla pod from the milk and then whisk the milk into the egg/sugar mixture and return to the saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat, whisking constantly, simmer 1 minute to completely cook the flour. Remove from heat and spread pastry cream in a shallow pan, cover with plastic wrap, leave to cool. I set mine in a chiller for at least 2 hours
